Checking in after an eventful July and August.

Sunset at Rehoboth Beach, splashing in the gullies that formed every evening.

It’s a little surreal to think that it’s September already. I’d normally wonder where July and August went, but this year I can chalk it up to a lot of traveling, between day trips and weekend trips to PA for birthday celebrations to a long weekend in Rehoboth and even a short trip to Bethesda to hang out with close friends. I feel like we’ve barely been home most weekends since the Fourth, and so I was pretty clear that I wanted to spend as much of Labor Day weekend home as possible.

In the midst of all of that chaos, I also managed to get myself a new job.

Crabcake from Woody’s in Dewey Beach. We took an Uber to get here and it was 100% worth it.

As much as I knew going from a work-from-home job to one requiring me to be in the office every day would be a huge change, I thought that since most of my career consisted of long commutes into an office every day that I would be able to adjust accordingly. While I was able to at first, I had forgotten how much driving two-plus hours a day sucks, and so I decided after some changes came about at work to see if I could find something that would be a better fit and a little closer to home. I ended up with two pretty fantastic offers, and went with the one that I felt would give me the most interesting work and the best culture, and best of all, it will allow me to go back to that work-from-home life.

Obligatory office nesting.

Things will be a little different this time around versus my last remote stint–I won’t have a big office space to myself anymore for one, but I also won’t feel bad turning on the heat or air conditioning because I won’t be heating or cooling a place with 25-foot ceilings either. Having a much better feel for the neighborhood now than when I did when we moved here, I also intend on taking my phone and laptop with me to change my scenery once in a while, if only to allow me to have more in-person interactions. I’ve already done some office nesting in straightening up my space and finally hanging some pictures I’ve long meant to, and I replaced a dead serrano plant with some lavender to hopefully add a little more cheer to the space. Eventually we’re going to replace the curtains with better black-out versions, and I want to do a little accent painting to give the room a little more character, but all in all it’s in better shape now than it’s ever been.

Pizza and a 90-minute IPA at the newly renovated Dogfish Brewpub in downtown Rehoboth, or in other words: a perfect Friday lunch.

This change also means I’ll get to cook more often again since I won’t have an hour-plus commute to contend with every afternoon, which is something I am absolutely looking forward to. Cooking after work doesn’t suck; cooking after driving an hour or more home from work definitely does, especially when your day begins at 5:40 in the morning. So it will be nice to do some meal planning over the weekends that includes some more ambitious dishes than grilled chicken thighs tossed with pesto or some sort of fruit salsa. With all of the travel we’ve been doing in the last two months I feel like I’ve barely cooked this summer, and so my cookbook project took a bit of an unexpected hiatus. I’ve tried to make up for that by plowing through books when we have a weekend home, and as of now I’m 87% of the way through our bookcase, which is encouraging. My hope is that I can make even more progress now that I’ll actually have time to cook more often during the week, and I also intend to update here on a more frequent basis again.

Actual food musings to come soon, I promise–I simply needed to clear out some of the cobwebs around here first.

Best of luck with the new job Elizabeth, it sounds like you made the right decision. I don’t work from home but my commute is a full 7 minutes (by train, it’s 20 mins if I walk the whole way which I often do) and the difference it makes to my day is amazing. I still only cook 1-2 nights during the week though! Yeah…don’t think I have a good excuse for that…